Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕
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Soldiers’ Pay is William Faulkner’s first published novel. It begins with a train journey on which two American soldiers, Joe Gilligan and Julian Lowe, are returning from the First World War. They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family. The novel continues to focus on Mahon and his slow deterioration, and the various romantic complications that arise upon his return home.
Faulkner drew inspiration for this novel from his own experience of the First World War. In the spring of 1918, he moved from his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, to Yale and worked as an accountant until meeting a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot who encouraged him to join the R.A.F. He then traveled to Toronto, pretended to be British (he affected a British accent and forged letters from British officers and a made-up Reverend), and joined the R.A.F. in the hopes of becoming a hero. But the war ended before he was able to complete his flight training, and, like Julian Lowe, he never witnessed actual combat. Upon returning to Mississippi, he began fabricating various heroic stories about his time in the air force (like narrowly surviving a plane crash with broken legs and metal plates under the skin), and proudly strode around Oxford in his uniform.
Faulkner was encouraged to write Soldiers’ Pay by his close friend and fellow writer Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner met in New Orleans. Anderson wrote in his Memoirs that he went “personally to Horace Liveright”—Soldiers’ Pay was originally published by Boni & Liveright—“to plead for the book.”
Though the novel was a commercial failure at the time of its publication, Faulkner’s subsequent fame has ensured its long-term success.
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- Author: William Faulkner
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“You ain’t got no scar,” he stated with dejection. “You ain’t even Donald, are you?”
“You guessed it, bub. I ain’t even Donald. But say, how about turning that searchlight some other way?”
He snapped off the light in weary disillusion. He burst out: “They won’t tell me nothing. I just want to know what his scar looks like but they won’t tell me nothing about it. Say, has he gone to bed?”
“Yes, he’s gone to bed. This ain’t a good time to see his scar.”
“How about tomorrow morning?” hopefully. “Could I see it then?”
“I dunno. Better wait till then.”
“Listen,” he suggested with inspiration, “I tell you what: tomorrow about eight when I am going to school you kind of get him to look out of the window and I’ll be passing and I’ll see it. I asked Sis, but she wouldn’t tell me nothing.”
“Who is Sis, bub?”
“She’s just my sister. Gosh, she’s mean. If I’d seen his scar I’d a told her now, wouldn’t I?”
“You bet. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Name’s Cecily Saunders, like mine only mine’s Robert Saunders. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
“Oh … Cecily. … Sure, you leave it to me, Colonel.”
He sighed with relief, yet still lingered. “Say, how many soldiers has he got here?”
“About one and a half, bub.”
“One and a half? Are they live ones?”
“Well, practically.”
“How can you have one and a half soldiers if they are live ones?”
“Ask the war department. They know how to do it.”
He pondered briefly. “Gee, I wish we could get some soldiers at our house. Do you reckon we could?”
“Why, I expect you could.”
“Could? How?” he asked eagerly.
“Ask your sister. She can tell you.”
“Aw, she won’t tell me.”
“Sure she will. You ask her.”
“Well, I’ll try,” he agreed without hope, yet still optimistic. “Well, I guess I better be going. They might be kind of anxious about me,” he explained, descending the steps. “Goodbye, mister,” he added politely.
“So long, Colonel.”
I’ll see his scar tomorrow, he thought with elation. I wonder if Sis does know how to get us a soldier? She don’t know much but maybe she does know that. But girls don’t never know nothing, so I ain’t going to count on it. Anyway I’ll see his scar tomorrow.
Tobe’s white jacket looming around the corner of the house gleamed dully in the young night and as young Robert mounted the steps toward the yellow rectangle of the front door Tobe’s voice said:
“Whyn’t you come on to yo’ supper? Yo’ mommer gwine tear yo’ hair and my hair bofe out if you late like this. She say fer you to clean up befo’ you goes to de dinin’ room: I done drawed you some nice water in de baff room. Run ’long now. I tell ’em you here.”
He paused only to call through his sister’s door: “I’m going to see it tomorrow. Yaaaah!” Then soaped and hungry he clattered into the dining room, accomplishing an intricate field maneuver lest his damaged rear be exposed. He ignored his mother’s cold stare.
“Robert Saunders, where have you been?”
“Mamma, there’s a soldier there says we can get one too.”
“One what?” asked his father through his cigar smoke.
“A soldier.”
“Soldier?”
“Yes, sir. That one says so.”
“That one what?”
“That soldier where Donald is. He says we can get a soldier, too.”
“How get one?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. But he says that Sis knows how to get us one.”
Mr. and Mrs. Saunders looked at each other above young Robert’s oblivious head as he bent over his plate spooning food into himself.
IIIOn board the Frisco Limited,
Missouri, April 2, 1919.
Dear Margaret—
I wonder if you miss me like I miss you. Well I never had much fun in St. Louis. I was there only a half a day. This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. It’s too bad I had to leave you so soon after. I will see my mother and attend to a few business matters and I will come back pretty soon. I will work like hell for you Margaret. This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. This dam train rocks so I cannot write anyway. Well, give my reguards to Giligan tell him not to break his arm crooking it until I get back. I will love you all ways.
With love
Julian.
“What is that child’s name, Joe?”
Mrs. Powers in one of her straight dark dresses stood on the porch in the sun. The morning breeze was in her hair, beneath her clothing like water, carrying sun with it: pigeons about the church spire leaned upon it like silver and slanting splashes of soft paint. The lawn sloping fenceward was gray with dew, and a negro informal in undershirt and overalls passed a lawn mower over the grass, leaving behind his machine a darker green stripe like an unrolling carpet. Grass sprang from the whirling blades and clung wetly to his legs.
“What child?” Gilligan, uncomfortable in new hard serge and a linen collar, sat on the balustrade moodily smoking. For reply she handed him the letter and with his cigarette tilted in the corner of his mouth he squinted through the smoke, reading.
“Oh, the ace. Name’s Lowe.”
“Of course: Lowe. I tried several times after he left us but I never could recall it.”
Gilligan returned the letter to her. “Funny kid, ain’t he? So you scorned my affections and taken his, huh?”
Her windy dress molded her longly. “Let’s go to the garden so I can have a cigarette.”
“You could have it here. The padre wouldn’t mind, I bet.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t. I am considering his parishioners. What would they think to see a dark strange woman smoking a cigarette on the rectory porch at eight o’clock in the morning?”
“They’ll think you are one of them French what-do-you-call-’ems
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